National Coordination Centre for Communicable Disease Control, Centre for Infectious Disease Control, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, RIVM/LCI, Postbus 1 (Postbak 13), 3720, BA, Bilthoven, The Netherlands.
Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
BMC Public Health. 2020 Mar 17;20(1):344. doi: 10.1186/s12889-020-8438-x.
Early detection, identification, and treatment of chronic hepatitis B through screening is vital for those at increased risk, e.g. born in hepatitis B endemic countries. In the Netherlands, Moroccan immigrants show low participation rates in health-related screening programmes. Since social networks influence health behaviour, we investigated whether similar screening intentions for chronic hepatitis B cluster within social networks of Moroccan immigrants.
We used respondent-driven sampling (RDS) where each participant ("recruiter") was asked to complete a questionnaire and to recruit three Moroccans ("recruitees") from their social network. Logistic regression analyses were used to analyse whether the recruiters' intention to request a screening test was similar to the intention of their recruitees.
We sampled 354 recruiter-recruitee pairs: for 154 pairs both participants had a positive screening intention, for 68 pairs both had a negative screening intention, and the remaining 132 pairs had a discordant intention to request a screening test. A tie between a recruiter and recruitee was associated with having the same screening intention, after correction for sociodemographic variables (OR 1.70 [1.15-2.51]).
The findings of our pilot study show clustering of screening intention among individuals in the same network. This provides opportunities for social network interventions to encourage participation in hepatitis B screening initiatives.
通过筛查及早发现、识别和治疗慢性乙型肝炎对于高风险人群（例如在乙型肝炎流行国家出生的人群）至关重要。在荷兰，摩洛哥移民参与健康相关筛查计划的比例较低。由于社交网络会影响健康行为，我们调查了摩洛哥移民的社交网络中是否存在类似的慢性乙型肝炎筛查意向。
我们使用了响应者驱动抽样（RDS）方法，要求每个参与者（“招募者”）填写一份问卷，并从他们的社交网络中招募三名摩洛哥人（“招募对象”）。使用逻辑回归分析来分析招募者要求进行筛查测试的意向是否与招募对象的意向相似。
我们共抽取了 354 对招募者-招募对象，其中 154 对参与者都有积极的筛查意向，68 对参与者都有消极的筛查意向，其余 132 对参与者的筛查意向不一致。在纠正社会人口学变量后，招募者和招募对象之间的联系与相同的筛查意向相关（OR 1.70 [1.15-2.51]）。
我们的初步研究结果表明，同一网络中的个体之间存在筛查意向的聚集。这为社交网络干预提供了机会，以鼓励参与乙型肝炎筛查计划。
